Guiding through Trauma (July 18 Intensive)

[Kairon Yeng]

Initial Post

Guiding through Trauma is one of the most empowering experience that I had in the Face-to-face meeting. One big takeaway for me is the importance of “process” and in the terms of Trauma, it is the importance of “sequencing”. In approaching deep soul work, as a guide, I am also approached with lots of charged emotions coupled into their stories. It is like walking with my clients to approach their guardians altogether. What this mean is that I as a guide must be centered enough and be attuned enough to the client’s needs at every single moment. It is through this centeredness and attunement that I could provide the clients enough safety to process their guardians and begin to uncouple the stories and emotions and eventually begin to finish and incomplete assimilation of frozen emotions.

I had the privilege to guide one of our good friends in the Fishbowl session. I thought it was the biggest opportunity for me as a guide to make use of the tools that I had learnt that week and more importantly it was biggest lesson for me as a guide to learn humility that I am not in charge of the process but rather, the process was a larger organism that I am part of. As a facilitator of such tender process, sensitivity and attunement of my senses to my client and to what is around me had to be more delicate and more precise. There is no space for doubt even though the whole process is a big experimentation process where mistakes bound to happen. For me, the doubt comes in when I as a facilitator tried to make “something” happen and it becomes especially strong when nothing that I did seem to work or make any progress. The problem wasn’t because there wasn’t any progress, but I was too attached to my own idea of progress that I did not catch the miniscule progress we were making. With that, I went into my mental space and lost the sense of bodily attunement and deep connection to the process I was in with my client. Again, I have to thank my mentor and my fellow observing peer to remind me of this importance. I also have to thank my practice client for having the patience and the trust despite being in a place of great distress in this process.

I learned a great deal about building resources this week. It is a powerful toolbox that I could co-create with my client as necessary equipment to take on our journey to face the guardians in the soul development process. The idea is not to beat the guardians but the ability to have enough safety to befriend these guardians and relieve their duties because they no longer serve the greater purpose of the soul. I also learned how Gestalt is such an important skill if not the most important skill as a guide when it comes to navigate such processes. Again, I cannot stress how important it is to stay connected and attuned to the process, and how the process alone has its own higher intelligence in resolving what needs to happen between the coach-client relationship and in the session.

Lastly, I have to mention that trauma has a wide range of severity to mildness. I see it in a perspective that trauma is unassimilated experiences and with it, the stories and emotions behind it. It is trauma because it is stopping the soul from its continual evolution and maturity. I feel that is the only reason that soul can stop maturing. Otherwise, with the force of evolution in consciousness, the soul can only continue to grow, fulfilling its entelechy. Thus, I’ll end in a note seeing a possibility that the greatest healing we can do for our clients is to sequence the unassimilated experiences and allow their innate intelligence and creative unique potential to do the rest of the unfoldment of the expression of their true nature.

[Heber Howard]

Kairon, I appreciate you calling attention to the gravity of the clients process. Approaching a clients guardians is definitely careful work and I appreciate the reminder of how important sequencing is to that process. Later in your post you said, “the greatest healing is to sequence the unassimilated experiences” which I very much agree with, I believe this is the root of healing. Since often these frozen emotions benefit from using body movements in order to sequence through the trauma it seems like with your background as a dancer you could be very good at this. As you say, staying connected to your body and not getting to stuck in your head is one of the most important skills to have as a coach. As a dancer, you have a lot of practice connecting to your body. I know it can still be easy to get stuck in your head and staying connected to your body in the session can be easier said than done but imagine this practice is a large part of what makes you so effective as a coach. This is the only way to stay connected to a client’s process, take an intuitive leap, and get close to gaining a better understanding about a clients issue. It is still amazing to me sometimes how important being connected to yourself is in the coaching process. Coaching can seem like a very mental exercise at first glance.

I appreciate the reminder that the coach is not in charge of the change process and is not the healer but a part of a process of conscious experimentation seeking change. In this way it can be easy to get sucked into the same seductive dilemma of getting to caught up in your own thoughts. The coach may have and idea of what progress looks like but that isn’t necessarily what the client is looking for and sometimes those important internal shifts are invisible to everyone else and are very important steps on their journey.

I am curious to hear more about what you were saying about trauma stopping soul from evolution and maturity. I’m not sure I entirely agree with this. Trauma keeps you stuck in certain ways but that doesn’t mean it stops the soul from evolving and maturing. Maybe it inhibits growth in certain ways, is that what you meant? There are many functional adults that are very mature but have some major trauma that has not been dealt with.

[Rachel Thor]

Heber’s your sentence “if feeling stuck is always a form of trauma…” jumped out at me and I got really curious in my own mind what I think about that.

According to Katie A’s paper: “trauma will be defined as the body’s physiological response to a life-threatening or perceived life-threatening situation that does not fully sequence out of the body.”

I know some clinical therapist friends who take a hard stance on what is and isn’t trauma, clinically. And they would probably not agree with your statement. I know this because I have asserted similar things to them and gotten push back!

But I think where I’m landing once again with it is that to require the firm clinical definition of trauma is to be doing therapy from the perspective of the DSM-5, or ” a cultural mental illness telescope” as Roger might say. (Self, Soul, Spirit. Strachan p 8) For me to take a coaching lens, perhaps one thing that separates strictly clinical practitioners, is the mindset that the client is already inherently whole and has what they need to move themselves forward through their life toward greater goals, whatever they may be.

He goes on to say that “Genetic predispositions have no intrinsic value nor do the environmental influences that interact with those inherited factors; the only value is the one the culture assigns. As stated previously, human beings do what they want to do at any given moment under any given circumstances, and make up reasons, excuses, and logical constructs post facto for what they did.” (Self, Soul, Spirit. Strachan p 10) Whether it’s because I work with higher functioning individuals or because I use a more “gestalty” worldview, I appreciate the individualized sense of letting each person’s animal body be acting, followed by noticing what their reasoning brains decide about those actions.

I appreciate this more fluid perspective, as it relates to what you said Heber, about trauma being any form of stuck, or unsequenced. Not being “allowed” to sequence, whether internally or culturally, is itself a sign that the body feeling the energy is not “safe enough” yet to process. So I love the idea of continually coming back to helping the client feel they are okay just as they are, even in the moment. That level of love and safety – safety to feel triggered and not need it to change – may be what your friend is still looking for from you. I’m curious how that’s going!

[Kairon Yeng]

Hello! Took me a while to come back to this page and respond to these wonderful reflections.

Heber – I believe I need to clarify what I meant by maturing because it can come from many different context. In this case, I am speaking about emotional maturity. Emotional maturity has a deep connection with soul development. And in the case of trauma, it halts the growth of emotional maturity temporarily. Also, interestingly, it acts as a catalyst for tremendous amount of emotional growth and maturity leading to soul development. It is as if pulling a bow backwards, waiting to be released so that the arrow can propel forward.

Nevertheless, there is also the case where a person can end up in a loop re-experiencing the triggers of their trauma and with coping mechanism that rather than releasing it, bypasses it or suppresses it. This is what I meant about people can end up being in this loop and not develop any soul growth. One good example is that one could develop sophisticated meditation practices and have many spiritual insights about their life but have no weight in their soul. What I mean by that is that we can know things, understand things and work with things but the trigger of traumatic experiences have not left us or there will be cases of inappropriate(out of context of the situation) emotional outbursts. People can still become more functional, more equipped with tools and look as if they have profound growth but in my point of view growth as such are still on the mental and superficial level. Until we address the core of the wounding/trauma and find deep acceptance of that experience, we are still stuck there. And I believe we will continue to re-experience this wounding/trauma through subtle triggers to big triggers until we fully allow our consciousness to go there.

Thank you for your reflection Heber :)!

Mandy – Yes, I totally agree. It is not minuscule at all. It may seem that way but it is definitely not. Again, I am reminded that the best gift to a person is our presence. I think to take the next step in my coaching is to really come from a place of not knowing. Thank you for your reflection 🙂

[Mandy Bishop]

Kairon,
Thank you so much for your post. Having been the client in your fishbowl session, it was really powerful for me to read about your experience coaching someone going through a traumatic response. There were a couple things you mentioned that really stood out to me as wonderful reminders and aspects that I notice I can get caught up in as a coach as well.

“I am not in charge of the process but rather, the process was a larger organism that I am part of.”

“There is no space for doubt even though the whole process is a big experimentation process where mistakes bound to happen. For me, the doubt comes in when I as a facilitator tried to make “something” happen and it becomes especially strong when nothing that I did seem to work or make any progress. The problem wasn’t because there wasn’t any progress, but I was too attached to my own idea of progress that I did not catch the miniscule progress we were making”

I can resonate with this feeling of needing to “make something happen” in a session and there has been a real learning edge for me to recognize there is nothing I need to MAKE happen, but that I am a part of a larger system that has its own innate wisdom and is finding its way back to homeostasis. I am just holding space for that.

I would disagree with one thing you said when you write “I was too attached to my own idea of progress that I did not catch the miniscule progress we were making”. In my experience as client, the process that occurred was absolutely NOT miniscule. That session was deep and profound for me and a lot was shaken up and reorganized deep within my system. As I write this, this is a very good reminder for me as coach as well – that we might not know the depth of progress that is happening under the surface for a client. Something that we observe from our view point, might be a very profound experience under the surface for the client.

Thanks for all you shared!

[David Raffelock]

Kairon,

I was nodding my head so much while reading your post. You so eloquently described the nature of working with trauma – you are not controlling someone’s process, but rather being fully there in service of a process that needs to happen. I loved your words on this, saying “I am not in charge of the process but rather, the process was a larger organism that I am part of.”

I also really loved when you said, “It is trauma because it is stopping the soul from its continual evolution and maturity.” I feel heavy thinking of the magnitude of that statement. Trauma truly can halt the process of self-actualization and development. I work with so many clients with trauma and it is so important for them to begin the work to resolve some of their trauma in order to progress.

[Heber Howard]

Initial Post
I really appreciated the emphasis Katie put on resourcing. Starting a session from a resourced place seems like a way to dive deep quicker by feeling a place to come back to. Yes, growth comes from chaos and challenge but growth cannot come from those challenges without having a sense of safety and trust. This is the way that I want to strive to work with my clients. My goal with sessions will mainly be helping my clients to feel a sense of trust in themselves and a feeling of support in the area’s they are stuck in. If feeling stuck is always a form trauma then it seems to me that feeling a sense of support and having a belief that it will be okay is the way through feeling stuck.
Something that struck me in this module was how often places with a scenic view of nature were used for people as a resource. It seemed to make intuitive sense to me but I didn’t understand why that was biologically. It’s not like a loved one that reminds you of support, it’s just a place. After talking more about it I learned that it is resourcing and calming at least in part because it encourages a wide angle view. This makes sense because our nervous system associates wide angle view with relaxation and associates a focused view with arousal. This struck me as very interesting and seems to be a huge part of what we are here doing at EBI. Often city life is very geared toward focused attention such as driving, working a job, being around screens, and being bombarded with advertisements that are trying to get your attention. One of the reasons nature is often so healing is because there are more chances for your brain to relax because there are less things requiring your focused attention.
This reminds me of our conversation about anxiety attacks and a friend that has suffered from anxiety attacks. This friend is very intelligent person who is very adept at living with stress and almost all of his enjoyment is based off of some kind of stimulating activity. He tends to feel nervous around a lot of new people and generally turn towards his phone or alcohol. He plays a lot of video games, “in order to relax” but that seems to add to his stress. One day I happened to be with him during one of his anxiety attacks. I let him through some grounding exercises which seem to be very helpful. I imagine the culture he lives in, the environment he lives in, and the mindset he was brought up with are huge factors in the cause of his anxiety attacks. Maybe he could benefit from more scenic views and wide angle vision.
Lastly, have a question that I don’t have the answer to yet. I have a close friend that gets triggered into a trauma response occasionally and I don’t know how to work with it. In the state she seems very distressed and sometimes I try to help by offering resourcing and some of the ways that I have been taught to work with trauma but she never goes for it. She says she doesn’t want fixed and doesn’t want to feel like she has to change her feelings. I want to help but because of how tender and fragile she seems at the time I feel scared of being directive, so I ask her if she wants to try something, which she never does. This often leads me silently sitting beside her trying to be supportive. I have also tried using the technique of getting hurt describe something in a more conversational manner. This seemed to work the best so far wasn’t as helpful as I would like to be.

[Daniel Brisbon]

So much great insight shared here Heber! I also really enjoyed seeing your profile photo that you chose! Awesome.

As far as the last paragraph you wrote, what I noticed was your friend and where she sits in the Stages of Change from our Brain 1 work. If a person is in what we call pre-contemplation, then there is nothing we can really do. We cannot change or heal people until they are willing and interested in healing themselves. It’s their choice. And until they choose to be open and listen and grow, all we can do is really just be with them. And maybe your best choice is to try to live and be an example toward her deeper need. Allow her to see through you what it looks like and feels like to move from a highly aroused state to a place of calm and balance.

[Heber Howard]

Hey thanks, Daniel. I took it on a trip to Yosemite last summer, hence the huge smile. I appreciate hearing your perspective on how to work with my friend. I don’t think she’s really in pre-contemplation though, which is part of what confuses me. It is definitely a trauma response and I hear her say that she wishes I could help her out of that place, but she feels unreachable, which is exactly how I feel about it. She’s even seeing a therapist for it, so it seems like she would be open to it, but she’s not. At least not in those moments she’s not. Maybe in some way she is in pre-contemplation at the moment but not overall? I do agree, I can’t force anything on her. I just wish I knew how to reach her in those places and help her system realize that she is not alone and that I am here for her.

[Kaity Holsapple]

I really enjoyed reading your post, Heber!

Your insight on nature and taking a “wide angle” focus really hit home for me. I’ve been working with this concept with my clients and notice how things can shift from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state through such simple methods, like wide angle vision or slowing the breath.

I also appreciate your story about your friend, who seems to have a lifestyle with sensory overload, like many Americans. I totally agree. I think that it’s challenging to feel relaxed, open, and connected when our environment is constantly overwhelming our brains. It would be interested to hear if wide angle vision helps your friend with panic attacks. From my personal experience, a change in perspective can mean everything 🙂

Thanks for sharing, and I look forward to hearing more about both of your friends.

[Hannah Grajko]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Heber! It was great to get a closer view of how you processed the section of the intensive, and how you are working with it with clients and friends in what sound like some pretty tender moments!

I’m glad you brought up the point about how the use of nature as a resource is such a good one and why that is. It also struck me as a deceptively simple way to calm the nervous system, and I had wondered about the biological implications. I like your comment about being out in nature encouraging a wide-angle view, and how that can move someone away from arousal. I’m also thinking back to when, one day with Katie, we used all different “ways of seeing” (including deep and sharp focus on one aspect of a natural feature) to practice resourcing. I’m now wondering if there are many ways, both wide-angle and focused attention, in which one can find their particularly helpful mode of nature resourcing. Perhaps it depends on the individual? Thanks for opening the door to this question!

[David Raffelock]

Heber,

Interesting post! Your connection of anxiety and trauma with wide angle vision really got me thinking. It makes sense. Tunnel vision seems to be the automatic operation of an anxiety/trauma response – being hyper focused and aroused is a survival instinct, and trauma and survival go hand in hand. I’ve noticed for myself that being in wide angle vision aids in my anxiety because it helps me to see the bigger picture and get out of my head.

[Kaity Holsapple]

Initial Post:

My client had the goal for overcoming social anxiety and making more meaningful friends. As the session unfolded, we identified her deeper need as contentment and gratitude, which led to a powerful threshold experience where her posture and baseline shifted dramatically. She went from collapsing in the chest to standing upright on both feet, and felt clearer and more level headed. During and after threshold, she intuitively tuned into her bodies natural resources.

It was cool to see the process of resources naturally arise in my client, and to use some of the tool’s Katie offered to strengthen her natural resourcing. Specifically, we used gratitude and describing objects in detail.

The major challenges that arose we’re in asking the right questions to get to the deeper need. Some questions were difficult for her to answer while others led us straight to the deeper need. I adapted by being flexible with wording and asking her to paraphrase and repeat important points.

She has a background in theater, so approaching threshold in a theatrical way really flowed and felt comfortable for my client. We acted certain things out, and I felt that our energy was feedings off of one another to create a peak experience. It also helped to have defined the need so strongly and clearly.

From that point, incorporation came naturally and had a lot of excitement and momentum behind it.

My major learning point from this session is how different each session unfolds based on my client’s comfort zones and personalities. With this client, we were able to enter threshold in a way I haven’t experienced before. With a different client I’ve been working with, threshold has felt more difficult and I’ve had to adapt it to stay within her baseline and window of tolerance. It shows me how important attunement is for a successful coaching session.

[Daniel Brisbon]

Oh wow, I’m really curious to hear about this session with your client in more detail! But my first question is, do you remember what the questions were that you shifted? And how did they shift? I would love to hear the before and after!

[Kaity Holsapple]

Daniel,

That’s a great question! I don’t remember the exact wording but it had to do with allowing her to shift from the doing mindset to the being mindset. She has had issues with making friendships for a long time and was left with an internal feeling like something was wrong with her. This was another aspect that continued to arise: “what am I doing wrong,” and when we got to the being questions, even “what am I being wrong.”

It took some coaxing to bring her mindset into a more positive and self-loving place. We talked about self-love and that allowed her to show up on a deeper level and tune into her need for contentment.

It was pretty awesome to see her pre-gratitude glow afterwards! She shared with me that she was starting to see the landscape in a different way as well, noticing more of the flowers, the sky, and the rock fixtures. This was a powerful session to facilitate!

[Heber Howard]

Hey, it sounds like you really got to get creative with this session. I love hearing about getting a chance to use some of the resourcing tools and actually seeing a physical change in your client. It sounds like it was a good nudge toward overcoming her social anxiety.

[Mandy Bishop]

Kaity, I love hearing about this as well! It is beautiful how fluid you can be and attuned to the strengths of your clients. Using your client’s theatricality to go deeper and create a meaningful threshold is so wonderful. It reminds me of how creative we can and need to be as coaches, which is so exciting to me!

[Hannah Grajko]

Kaity,

It was so awesome to read that your client organically started using some of her own resources in the threshold! It just brought to mind that our systems are all geared toward health, and the arrival of your clients own personal resourcing (in what I’m just assuming was not initially pretexted by you as a guide) is a testament to the fact that we often have these – for better or worse – without even realizing it.

I love that once her resources arose, you used what we learned this week to reinforce and emphasize them, instead of needing to come up with a whole new set of things for her to use. It really shows your astute ability to remain present with your clients and whatever comes up, and not try to create a journey for them. Great post!

[Heber Howard]

Final post

I absolutely love learning about working with trauma. Trauma is such an umbrella term and when a major trauma comes up it can be so challenging to reach the person you are with and it can feel so hopeless for the client. It seems like everyone should have some training in how to be with someone in trauma. Especially, because it’s so much easier to become re-traumatized after an initial trauma. I also find it fascinating learning to understand ways in which to work with someones nervous system to calm them down and/or help them feel safe. I was happy to learn lessons such as the strongest nervous system in the room wins, some indicators of disassociation to look for and questions to ask someone. For example, I had never thought dissociative crying was a thing before, I thought crying was always a good thing. Now I know that the person has to be aware of what is going on with them in order to really process the emotion it looks like they are processing when they are crying. I am really thankful to understand what dissociative crying is, why it can be an issue, and what to look out for. Also, I love the question, “Is it okay to feel okay when thing are okay?”

A while ago, a client that I work with at my job had been continuing to get more and more stressed out because a move was coming up, causing him to be a lot more volatile than usual. One night he exploded and started screaming at staff as loud as he could, threatening to sue them and accusing them of mistreating him. After a little while of this, he went outside and was pacing, still obviously very upset. I went over to him and started talking to him. After a bit, I suggested that we try the pushing exercise we did in this module in order to resource him and hopefully dissipate some of his energy. He agreed, we pushed on each other for a little while and it totally changed his mood. It was sort of incredible how dramatic of a shift he made in such a short amount of time. I know this won’t happen to everyone, but it is a testament to how well these tools can work.
Thanks everyone!

[Mandy Bishop]

Initial Post:

My practice client is a longterm client I have seen about six times so far. We meet every other week online. She is someone who has a known history of trauma and grief. Having developmental trauma from various abusive relationships (physically, sexually, and verbally) from a young age, as well as shock trauma experiencing assault as an adult and undergoing a major surgery, I would say she has a complex traumatic background. She has a long history of extreme and real threats to her safety that have been stored in her hippocampus, and a pattern of dissociating as a way to get through stressful traumatic experiences when her amygdala fires off the flight, fight, freeze response. This is happening currently on a regular basis. Parts of her are very aware of how trauma effects her ability to grow, and she sees a therapist, coach, does yoga and other mindfulness exercises to work at changing deeply engrained reactivity patterns and coping mechanisms, and other parts of her just want to keep her safe and shut down. The major goal she has identified in our coaching sessions is to close the gap between her habitual survival state of being and her deep desire to be more comfortable in her body, to feel safe and be able to be in the flow.

In our sessions we have done some partswork as well as looking at unconscious beliefs through storying, but much of our time has been spent slowly building up resourcing and increasing her window of tolerance for “it to be okay to feel okay if everything is okay”. This client has built up a very strong ability to deflect and dissociate by “talking about” — talking about her husband, her latest workshop, her past, she will also talk about her body rather than have a present experience in her body. This has been a learning edge for me as I have had to learn to decipher when she is talking about how something in her life effects her body, versus being with the sensations in her body in that moment. I have begun to bring her awareness to this when it happens and use the Gestalt method of statement making to see what fits for her bringing her more into a present moment experience in her body, down from the pre-frontal cortex. In addition, I have focused on building up resourcing both in our sessions and with invitations for practice between our sessions.

Two sessions ago, my client arrived in a very hyper-aroused state as her family life had been thrown into chaos in between our sessions. My client had awareness to know she had been operating in survival mode for the past couple weeks and that she was disconnected. In a previous session, we had identified her feet as a place in her body that felt positive/neutral, so I had this in the back of my mind as we continued. I asked if she’d like to start with a grounding, however she stated she didn’t want to be in her body as it felt as though she might get swallowed up if she allowed herself to feel. I brought the goal up of her wanting to find safety and be more at home in her body, and named that I was aware that in this moment she was dissociating. I asked if this goal still felt like what she wanted to work with. She said yes overall, but she was afraid and just needed to talk. I remembered from the trauma section the importance of respecting the no and a person’s boundary for creating safety. “Although being challenged by and moving through stressful situations has the potential to be empowering, it also has the potential to have a re-traumatizing effect.” (Asmus & McDevitt, p.23) So, I celebrated her choice and boundary setting, and followed where she took the session. She talked as much as she needed and I held space and reflected. By the end of this session, her speech had slowed, her tone of voice had dropped, breathing returned to a deeper, slower pace and overall she appeared to be more grounded to me. I asked her what she was aware of after summarizing what I had heard during the hour. She said that “Just in sharing my story and in being heard and allowed to be how I am right now I feel much more grounded”.

By the following session, she appeared to be more ready and willing to go towards the goal of shifting old patterns and beliefs to feel more comfortable and safe in her body. Her capacity to be with difficult emotions seemed to have increased. As we went into the state of survival she had been experiencing and wanting to shift, she identified feeling like she was a 12 year old girl. At this point she was able and willing to spend some time looking at her 12 year old self that was wanting to disappear, and she was able to name from this place that she wanted to “stand her ground, have command of herself, and stay strong”. A lot of strong emotions arose in voicing this. However, this time my client allowed me to guide her to ground into her feet. I just stayed with her feet, not wanting her to get flooded but wanting to allow the resource to be a place of safety for her so that this experience could soak into her being. As we spent time naming and experiencing the sensations in her feet, the most remarkable thing happened! The safe and positive feelings just naturally began to move up her legs and into her spine. Eventually she was standing up tall and her eyes had risen to direct contact. She was exuding a natural strength and confidence I had not seen before. Neither one of us had to DO anything for this state shift to occur. It naturally began to happen because my client felt safe enough to allow the feelings to naturally arise. Over our time together, her window of tolerance for positive or neutral feelings has increased. And this particular experience allowed a sequencing to occur. Because my client was able to tap into a resource and a sense of safety, her nervous system was able to naturally find its way back to homeostasis. As we talked about incorporation of this powerful experience, my client came up with a mantra “I am a brilliant badass!”, along with an intention to drop into her feet daily to return to that safe and strong feeling.

I don’t know how I might do this with an online client, but in the future I’d really love to build upon forming deep relationships with nature as part of our resourcing. In addition to the safe places in the body, I’d like to build up my ability to guide clients through nature based experiences where they begin to relate to the tree’s ability to provide touch, the meadow’s ability to listen, the river’s ability to release and cleanse. I’m drawn to this because sometimes, especially when you’ve experienced a lot of body trauma, it can feel safer to resource outside of yourself rather than dropping into the body. I’m realizing how important building resourcing is to the coaching work we are doing, and that it is not something that people inherently know or have. In many cases, especially with people that have a traumatic background, it needs to be taught and practiced ritually. Once we have enough of a sense of safety within our bodies and our environment, then like all other natural beings, our systems naturally find their way back to homeostasis and balance. The challenge is to not get caught up in fixing anything or get bogged down with the life story, but to focus on building up resource and re-establishing safety so that nature can do the rest.

[Rachel Thor]

Mandy OH MY GOSH THIS IS AMAZING!

I’m smiling ear to ear reading through this experience. I’m so impressed with how you totally listened to her “no” at the time and allowed her system to talk it out, even if it seemed dis-regulated, in order to find her own ground in her own time. And your patience and guidance with really grounding and sequencing her 12 year old part through the body – incredible! I’m like jumping for joy here.

And this sounds a lot like therapy, so my question again to Michael, Ivy, Ryan, Daniel, etc. is, (just confirming) that we’re still coaching if we’re doing client-based sessions focused on the client’s goals, right? There are parts of me that show up in regard to this, on the one hand I recognize this work as very important and resonant with the work I want to do with trauma. on the other hand, some part of me gets scared of crossing too far into therapy territory and basically having someone sue me. I get that those are PARTS that show up for me, but I am still curious about what you all have to say about this if you see this comment.

[Michael]

Thanks for your feedback, Rachel! And thanks for your question too. This is something I’m really curious about as well and still feeling a bit unclear about – the line between coaching and therapy and where is “safe” territory for me to work within without crossing too far over into therapy territory. I would love to hear mentors thoughts on this as well.

[Kairon Yeng]

This is so inspiring Mandy!

Thank you for sharing your process with your client along with the insights that come with it. I really see that power in just being present for the client’s need. I see this as developing safety, trust and intimacy with the client. When that happens, as a coach, we are our client’s biggest resource! I tend to forget that when we as nature-connected coach embodies nature and are attuned to the frequency of nature, we are nature that could talk and respond back to our client.

One big clue for me when it comes to the question of ” is this coaching or is this therapy” is when I am dealing with situation of my client larger than the scope of my training and my expertise. I think it is important that I am completely honest with myself as well as having a dialogue with my clients about what do they truly need. I feel most people would not know the differences and would not know what they should do. And my job as a coach is to create the awareness and assist my client to have a clarity about what they really need.

There is also a difference between “trauma or Trauma”. This is where I feel that there is a grey area in our work. That at-the-moment heart wisdom will be something we need to be connected to in order to know what we should be doing.

Thank you!

[Kent-Singing Panther]

Mandy, I appreciate your attentiveness to your client and allowing yourself to go into the unknown, trusting where the process and your client might take you. You honored her boundaries and by doing so, created a safe container for your client to trust herself and experience what she was ready to experience. I resonate with your awareness that helping others resource with nature is a big part of your work. I have been seeing that more and more too. It’s empowering to help others experience the resourcefulness of nature in hope that they can utilize nature as a major, personal resource even if they are working with other professionals to treat their trauma, or when we are doing online sessions and aren’t able to be with them in nature.

[Rachel Thor]

Initial post

This client I’ve been working with for about 6 months now. She’s in her mid 40’s, has a 5 year old son, teaches mindfulness and meditation at a University, and is growing her tarot reading practice.

It’s so beautiful actually. In PA, we would meet every time at this same park. Over months of parts work and thresholds together, we discovered the “map” of her soul, laid out in the park. Often an entire session’s threshold would end up teaching us about one of these parts and how it relates to the whole, what it’s here for. And then it would be available to interact with other parts or go to as resource as we externalized the inner dialogues.

There is this giant oak that is her “facilitator of transformation” part. It’s bright and works closely with Soul. There is the “innocence grove” where her child lives and hides and feels safe. There’s the goddess sycamore and the Hawkeye canopy and all these wonderful locations mapped out, similar to how I mapped my mandala during my vision fast. When I got curious about which part of nature would wind up representing the soul, she surprised me. I thought it would be the biggest tree maybe… it wasn’t! “Soul” for her shows up in a slow, undulating movement and she feels it as the field, literally the field of ground that each tree is growing in. The field of consciousness that each part arises from and returns to. I am just so inspired by the felt sense and imagery of this map. And then there’s the shadow place. It was signified by the public bathroom and triggered disgust and fear whenever she would notice it out of the corner of her awareness.

Each time for the past few months, we have done the work of acknowledging it as part of the whole place without going toward it. We stayed with resourcing, quite literally staying in the “light places” of the park, and of her psyche. She would often go to the park in between our sessions to do ceremony and offer gratitude to her parts, to listen and understand. My hunch is that since this shadow is triggering disgust, there is likely self-disgust or shame involved. Shame and self repression, whether from an acute stored trauma, or likely the semi-developmental trauma of the repression of shame itself surrounding this part.

This particular session, she had arrived to the park 30 mins early to meditate and check in with her parts (she’s so badass). When I called, we moved through severance relatively quickly. This was unique, as she often has trouble identifying “what she wants”, and getting in touch with what she WANTS in life is a big goal of hers actually. Anyways today her soul knew clearly. She wanted to explore the shadow place. The beauty was also in her soul’s innate knowing of resource. She was very calm, assured, and present the whole time we were together because she had already known to be with her resourced parts on the ground of her soul. If it had not been for that, I would have likely guided us to some resourcing activity to begin threshold.

I felt this as obvious “shadow work” in the sense that there might be parts or experiences that have been unknown before, that typically function out of conscious awareness. She said she felt drawn to a sort of archway hole in the bushes surrounding the bathroom/shadow place, and a tree she could see through it.

As she second guessed herself, I asked her to check in with her body. She identified that her body wanted to go there, and felt safe. I was in awe, guiding this highly nature based session over the phone from Colorado!

She crossed the shadow place’s physical threshold (among others) and began to explore. What I noted was the state of curiosity and calm she was in. She realized for the first time there was a whole world, so to speak, BEHIND the bathroom. New trees, new plants, new places. There were parts back here, living their lives! She took time to notice the physical aspects, that hemlock or this hawthorne. I guided her through the sacred questions a number of times for each noticing, and continually back to her inner sensations to check in and regulate.

At one point, she was confused at what she was seeing, but eventually realized: there were two evergreen trees that had “enmeshed”. Their branches where poking into and through each other. As she witnessed, she began feeling that sense of disgust and panic. Rather quickly from there, she began weeping. At this point, I was able to recognize that this particular weeping belongs to one of her parts that arises as a form of protection from intensity (it has done so many other times and we have worked lovingly with her, acknowledging this part and bringing it back to the soul to decide if it was safe to continue).

In this moment, sensing that she was beginning to hit her window of tolerance for the discomfort, I decided to speak Kindly and firmly to “Weepie” and let her know, “I see you here to protect *client* from this experience and want you to know that we don’t have to go any farther today, and that you are safe.” “Oh…. Okay!” She said, somewhat startled yet relieved at the invitation to pause.

Immediately she was back in curious explorer mode and she quickly found a patch of lovely white flowers that attached her. Again, her soul’s ability to identify and move toward resource, even in the shadow place, was inspiring. I often felt excited as though I were along for the ride and merely offered a paddle stroke here or there as I watched her unfold her own story. She told me these white flowers are special because they actually bloom at night, in the dark. This became SUCH a metaphor for resource that we will come back to. The beauty in the shadow.

Anyways after a bit of time with the flowers, she found a stump calling her to sit. Here she began integrating her time in the shadow place through simply resting in it. She reflected on just HOW MUCH self-compassion building and ground work it has taken, over 6 months of mapping AND loving herself internally and through the metaphor of this park, it took to even be ready to LOOK at the shadow place. And she sent herself love then, more resource.

While there, she remembered other moments in her past when “Weepie” would show up – every time she used to talk about the harm done to the earth in her environmental classes, for example. And she began feeling Weepie’s role. That she’s a part here to support the shadow journey in many ways. Here to help feel, here to protect. She wished someone had been there, at the time of her memory, to let her know that is was okay that this part showed up, that she isn’t crazy or incompetent, rather it was a form of support. 

I asked her if she would like to be that person now, to infuse this wise and self-compassionate voice into that memory. She was excited and chose to do just that. In sweet rhythm, she was ready to “return” to the light side again. She crossed the shadow threshold into the field which holds all her known, “light” parts.

She laid on the ground in the sun for several minutes and I invited her not to rush. When she sat up, we discussed that this was a DEEP threshold, and that integration might need to continue a while, however in order to incorporate what was ready now, we reflected a bit. She saw that her soul was truly guiding her through that experience. That the parts voicing opposing concerns were not problematic, but helped her find the balance of moving toward without overdoing it. When it comes to discovering what she WANTS in life, it seems she often gets scared of “going too far” into one side or the other, and she saw how her body naturally titrated the experience with loads of safety and love, just to touch into challenges. Her action step for this week is to follow her intuition more often in those moment to moment urges.

While this isn’t a super specific smart goal, I felt it was appropriate for the stage of incorporation we were in at the time. I believe that next session will be more focused on a larger incorporation of this deep experience.

What I learned was just how powerful time, trust, and safety can be with clients to allow them to move toward their own challenges gracefully. I can FEEL the power of the nature map like WHOA. I’m blown away by this work.

While I was guiding gently, I was tracking her experience, or possible experience, of trauma and dis-regulation sharply. I was listening to her breathing pace, changes in vocal tones, and the level of interception vs external description she was giving as ways to track her regulation.

It’s also a great experience for me and reminder that true, healing shadow or trauma work actually feels good often, because of how slow it moves and how much resource is available… because it maintains if not slightly stretches the window of tolerance.

I’m grateful for Katie’s writing on trauma and resource exercises because I had a clear understanding each time my client naturally moved toward one that her nervous system was self-regulating.

I’m absolutely going to continue this work, and my client is “excited to visit this place again”. I think we have some real potential for healing in this shadow place as we continue to track regulation and resource, and of course always relate it back to her coaching goals.

[Kent-Singing Panther]

Wow Rachel, what a testimony your clients experience was to time, trust and safety like you said. I loved reading about the map your client created and how you could navigate it with her even over the phone. It’s easy to see how connected you are to trauma based work and how valuable it is for the people that work with you. This part really stuck out to me…”In this moment, sensing that she was beginning to hit her window of tolerance for the discomfort, I decided to speak Kindly and firmly to “Weepie” and let her know, “I see you here to protect *client* from this experience and want you to know that we don’t have to go any farther today, and that you are safe.” “Oh…. Okay!” She said, somewhat startled yet relieved at the invitation to pause.” You showed a wonderful sensitivity in that moment; aware of the window of tolerance and her parts, being able to speak into the moment to allow space and “okay-ness.” Based on her reaction it was exactly what, and how, she needed to hear it.

[Rachel Thor]

summary

It’s quite clear to me that body-centered and nature-centered therapies co-relate, whether in coaching or counseling, especially when it comes to trauma. For one, moving between internal and external awareness is one form of titration that supports healing. For two, looking at either one helps to map the other. For example, my client’s internal sense of disgust alerted us to a “part” on the external map, those evergreens. And her external movement toward the white flowers signaled an internal shift toward nervous system regulation. There were many times when my client could NOT really feel her internal states while working in shadow, so the externalized exploration made it possible and safe to begin seeing what’s in her insides without jumping into overwhelm. Nature itself allowed an increased window of safety and tolerance, and then the final explanation of the nature metaphor is grounded in awareness of body states.

[Michael]

Hi gang, hope this helps with the coaching vs. therapy question. I’m going to cover a lot here, more than the questions that are asked.

Are you treating trauma? If so that is therapy. Treating would look like focusing on the diagnosis and mapping a treatment plan where the focus is entirely on the treatment of trauma. If you ever had to provide your coaching notes in court, it would clearly be focused on the treatment of the diagnosis of trauma. That is not coaching.

Coaching holds trauma as a part of the client’s experience with the central focus on the client’s goals. Your coaching notes would show that and show measurable progress in that direction. There would also be no evidence that you as the coach are holding an agenda that is focused on treating trauma. This might look like noting the trauma, but focusing on the desired outcome/experience (Deeper Need) the client determines and noting how the client identified the steps towards their own success. Mind-body awareness is not isolated to the treatment of trauma. It can be a part of that, for sure, but m/b awareness is just developed awareness. Creating Awareness is an ICF core competency, and as long as m/b awareness is helping the client take steps towards his/her goals, you’re golden (not sure what isn’t m/b awareness, actually).

Remember, coaching is informed by (among others) the fields and research of psychology and neuroscience. At the level that you are coaching – the depth at which you are “creating awareness” for your client – the coaching could become more effective than then clinical therapy, but that is for your client to decide for themselves. At this high level you need to stay very focused on client goals (outcomes), and to not get pulled into treatment. If that happens, it is a good indicator that the client needs more clinical support which can present a wonderful opportunity for you to partner with a trauma therapist to support your client.

In my initial sessions with a client who has a focus on trauma or some diagnosis, I often ask them, “why are you seeking coaching over clinical treatment?” This opens the door to establish a clear difference between the two and highlight what side of the road you’re on. I also ask about their treatment history and if they are working with anyone at this time. If so, I will ask for permission to collaborate. If not, I will often ask for permission to speak to a professional they have worked with around this diagnosis to get their opinion on if coaching is appropriate for the client. If they have never worked with anyone before, I will very clearly explain the difference between the two and allow them to make the decision, with the understanding that if they choose to move forward and it becomes clear that more support is necessary than I will make those recommendations (in fact, that is in my disclosure form).

Last notes:
1- Your scope of training is important. If you have or decide to get more trauma training than what is taught at EBI, you can blur the lines a bit more as an experienced and trained trauma professional. However, the line still needs to be clear – to the client – as to when you are treating and when you are coaching.

2- If you are going to dive deep into trauma-based coaching (primary focus) then I would suggest both more education and finding a clinical trauma therapist who would supervise you: help you make sound decisions as a coach, support your understanding of the skills and techniques of that form of trauma treatment, and maintain a record of your work with your clients. This will cover all the bases and provide you with an additional layer of liability protection.

[Kairon Yeng]

Summary Post

I have to constantly remind myself that I am not the healer and that I don’t do the healing. Nature does. I am just there to facilitate and mirror this quality. I believe I need to stop getting in the way of myself in order to not to get in the way of my client. This brings me to this question, “How do I know if I am nature-connected?” I think there is a switch button that we can turn on to get into that frequency and this frequency is potent when it comes to nature-connected coaching. Also, the awareness to simply know that I am disconnected is something that I can continue to work on in order to remind myself to go back into connection.

Trauma is such a powerful catalyst for our growth and evolution. I also think trauma is also part of nature’s creation. The simply phenomenon of birth and existing can be traumatizing. This is why we are also blessed with a healing system that can rewire that. Moving forward from here, I would continue to ask myself, “how can I develop a deeper relationship with trauma?”

[Mandy Bishop]

Summary Post:

Summary Post:

One of the things that stands out to me the most from the trauma section is “increasing the window of tolerance”. This can be in the form of ability to touch into the difficult feelings without going into fight, flight or freeze. But this can also be about being able to experience pleasurable sensations as well. Building resourcing, even if it just begins with identifying and experiencing states of resource only in the coaching session, but eventually extends beyond into the client’s life, this is one of the greatest tools to lay the foundation for shifting one’s state from habitual reaction to safety and trust. Incorporating nature as a way to find safety, resource, and increase one’s window of tolerance makes so much sense to me. It is a benign force, always supporting us and giving to us. One that can be a visual representation of all that is going on inside of us that we may have rejected or shamed. And when we see ourselves reflected back to us through nature, we are much more able to accept those parts of ourselves as natural elements, without judgment. It is also one of the only places I have found that I believed could hold the amount of grief, anger, fear, etc. that I’ve carried. I really appreciate Kairon’s reflection that “when we as nature-connected coaches embody nature and are attuned to the frequency of nature, we ARE nature that could talk and respond back to our client.”

[Kaity Holsapple]

Summary:

Trauma is in the nervous system, not in the event. The impulse of the nervous system is either to contract (freeze) or mobilize (fight or flight). Our bodies naturally want to regulate themselves. As coaches, we can support our clients in finding healthy regulation and resourcing to increase the window of tolerance around traumatic responses in the body. If a trauma is activated during a coaching sessions, a vital tool to for our use is titration, where we move back and forth between the trauma and the resource.

Traumatic arousal brings the nervous system back into the same state and activation it was in during the traumatic experience(s). We can support our clients in realize where they are in the present moment is safe to help their system realize that the trauma was in the past, rather than in the present moment. This allows the event to sequence and move through rather than continue to be “stuck” in the nervous system.

The largest piece for me, as a coach, is to create a safe environment for my client to feel seen, supported, and allowed. We are supporting their bodies natural impulse to sequence, but in a healthy way that encourages more long-term balance in the nervous system.

[Kent-Singing Panther]

My client recently had a breakthrough of understanding where her anxiety is rooted. During our last session she braved entering into the woods as she felt led, facing the unknown with courage and resources her and I have been working on. She grounded herself before entering into this threshold that acted as a prevention technique and provided a safe container for her to face her fear; “…active steps can be taken to create a psychologically safe container within which clients can take more calculated risks” (Emotional Risk Management: Asmus/McDevitt Pg. 24) I don’t think her experience would have went as positively as it did had she not done utilized this preventative technique.

For me, as a coach, this really emphasized the importance of prevention with everyone I work with. Everyone has trauma on some level and I don’t know if, when or how that trauma will present itself. For my clients sake, and mine, I think it would be valuable to teach and use more preventative techniques so that my client is more resourced and engaged before trauma even presents. Of course this is a major component of conscious nature-connection.

Back to the session: I reflected with my client that her experience is defined as Shock Trauma…”the result of a specific incident that poses a real or perceived threat to one’s life or the lives of loved ones and which overwhelms the capacity to respond effectively.” (ERM: Asmus/McDevitt Pg. 21-22) But as she opened up more about her father it seems like her anxiety is more deeply rooted from Developmental Trauma…”psychological based issues that are a result of inadequate nurturing and support within critical developmental periods of childhood.” (ERM: Asmus/McDevitt Pg. 22). She describes her father as a “complicated” man; emotionally distant, rigged, angry, and closed minded yet always provided for the family by working a lot to give them more than what he had growing up. She says he also struggled with alcohol and could be described as a high functioning alcoholic.

The more she describes her father and their relationship, I can see that her breathing becomes more shallow. I reflect this back to her and she said that she was getting tightness in her chest. More and more she is connecting her behavior and mindset to her relationship with her father. She recalls what I said during the last session about how her brain stored information, and the difference between the event(s) and her reaction to the event(s). She states, “when I was young I wasn’t aware of all these connections to my dad’s relationship but I unconsciously stored it all away. Does that mean I can consciously change my reaction now?” YES!!! I exclaimed, and I invited her to sequence the chest tightness.

I asked her what felt good for her to resource and she said she wanted to ground in her bare feet but was hesitant because it was cold outside. I suggested she could sit and put her hands on the ground and she felt attracted to do that. I invited her to really feel the ground beneath her butt, legs and hands then asked her to tune back into the sensation in her chest. She stated that the tightness was already feeling lighter and she began to recall this sensation at other points in time when she wanted to reach out to her father when he started getting ill. She said she didn’t want him to pass with their being any tension between them. She teared up and I could see the shallow breaths coming back. She described the tightness moving up into her throat, so I guided her to come back to her body and the ground. She calmed down quickly and I gave her some space in this moment.

Because of the tightness going to her throat I asked her if there was anything left unsaid between her and her father. She said that she has been realizing more and more how his own pain affected him and his relationships, and that she wanted to tell him that is wasn’t his fault. Emotion came on strong now and she could hardly speak through the tears. I noticed she kept looking at a big tree nearby; I asked if she felt an attraction to it and she described how peaceful, yet strong it is. I invited her to reflect the posture of the tree so we stood up and I asked her to envision what it feels like to be that tree. After several minutes of this I asked what she noticed and she said, “I switched from reflecting the tree’s groundedness to my own.” I asked what that told her…”it tells me that I am strong and peaceful.” What does that mean for you…”it means that I can access my strength and peace anytime. I need to remember to trust myself.” I felt the shift when she mentioned her need and I reflected the truth she just spoke with her own words

I asked about the tightness and she said it was gone, and the space was now filled with lightness that felt like the wind. She looked over at a pile of stones and I asked what was happening. She said the pile of stones reminded her of her father. What would you like to say to your dad? I asked. She picked up a large stone and said “Dad, I know you did what you could for me and our family, but I can’t carry the weight of this feeling of abandonment anymore. I am strong and I am at peace.” She put down the stone and breathed deeply into her belly.

I was so humbled to hold space for the healing that I witnessed during this session. My client’s awareness and intuitiveness has become so present and all it really took was being in that space with her, allowing her to flow with her own knowing, but also helping her to see herself more clearly and inviting her to go a little deeper. She has dove in and discovered her own strength, and that she has peace knowing she can access it anytime. I reflected to her how her independence has shown up in these ways; that her sessions where really guided by her and look at the healing she has experienced because of it.

Within these sessions I really began to see how differently trauma can affect a person. My clients trauma was subtle in some ways; really under the surface for most of her life. If I hadn’t known what was under the surface I wouldn’t have thought she struggled with anxiety. But now I see how she has distracted herself from it and the triggers that brought it back to focus. The deeper trauma was really held by her father from what I could gather. We didn’t go into his story, but clearly his pain influenced the way my client authentically moved in her life. These sessions have served her in her want to be more independent and within these sessions has uncovered her need to trust herself.

[Kent-Singing Panther]

Summary Post:

This section on trauma has been incredibly influential for me. Trauma was not even really on my radar before now, and I’m so glad to have learned what I know thus far. I don’t see myself diving into more extensive education/training about trauma, or working with clients greatly affected, but just to remember that ALL of us carry some form of it is extremely important to keep in mind. Trauma informs all of us at our deepest levels and most of us are not conscious of it. But depending on the clients wants/needs, it may be very necessary to uncover, or approach, their trauma to determine if they are able to resource enough to continue to move forward. And that is a place I see myself working; guiding people into the resource of their OTHER body…nature. Nature is invaluable in her innate ability to hold space for us and share in her grounded-ness. Like the experience my client had; she borrowed the posture and energy of the tree during a time when she felt uneasy, but then shifted to her own body and described how quickly she felt aligned with herself. Nature IS our source; our breath is nature’s breath, our cells are nature’s cells. Unfortunately most people live as if nature doesn’t matter, which in and of itself is a developmental trauma of sorts. The body’s intelligence connects with nature’s intelligence in it’s determination for homeostasis. As a coach I want to help my clients clear out enough space to allow that connection to continue it’s course.

[David Raffelock]

Initial Post

This learning module has been one of the most beneficial foundations for my work with clients in treatment! One example of work with a client comes to mind. I was working in the women’s program, Juniper Canyon, and I was in the severance phase of preparing clients for a 3-day vision fast. I was meeting with clients individually to help them further distill their intentions for the ceremony.

I was meeting with the first of three clients. She was in treatment for heroin addiction. Vulnerability was challenging for her, and she always deflected from her emotional experience, staying focused on task-orientation. We were diving into a conversation, and I was pushing her to her edge, guiding her to her deeper need. The flow of the process led use to pendulation. She was dive deep, withdraw and flirt with a trauma response, and I would bring her back to the present moment using the senses.

As we continued this for some time – diving deeper, coming back out to get grounded again, and so on – I eventually decided to explicitly establish a resource for her. I talked to her about what had been happening and why having her own resource could be helpful. I tried to establish a “safe place” similar to that used in EMDR. I guided her through envisioning a nature scene that felt peaceful and safe. For a moment it felt as though she found somewhere that was working. Then I felt a shift and noticed she was going down some dark rabbit hole, leaving a place of regulation. I asked her to open her eyes, and she was clearly no longer there in a regulated way.

I asked what happened, and she had envisioned a scene from her childhood, at the beach with her family. The nature of the scene was perfect for a resource – it was safe, calm, and filled with joy. However, the feeling of safety was so foreign to her that this triggered the thoughts of how distant that feeling actually was. What resulted was a deep sadness and grief for a life that was lived without emotional safety or a feeling of acceptance. She was deep into a low-road circuit, so I again used more sensory resources to bring her back.

Situations like this leave me feeling humbled and grateful to have learned how to trust and honor the process. The conversation that followed led to a deeper need associated with what came up – to accept herself and be gentle with herself. Since around the time that she envisioned as a child, she hadn’t felt safe to have emotions or be vulnerable. As a result, she shut down any emotional existence she had and instead focused on perfection in task orientation.

In this experience, I had an immense amount of confidence in guiding through trauma. I couldn’t imagine how the situation would have gone if I didn’t have a strong foundation in maintaining emotional contact and resourcing. What would have happened if I felt ill-equipped and panicked for a “solution”, if I didn’t know how to pendulate or use resources, or if I left her in a state of dysregulation?

[David Raffelock]

Summary Post

There’s so much more to learn! I’m so grateful for this module. In my work with adults in treatment, trauma and addiction go hand in hand. One seldom exists without the other. It actually blows my mind that simple methods and tools like guiding through trauma are not taught to anyone working in addiction recover. Fortunately, most of my co-staff are incredibly talented guides and have a natural ability to stay emotionally present with clients. However, after this module I can see that there is a severe lack of formal training in the field I work in. My training in working with trauma has come in handy countless times at work. I’m actually considering doing/learning more to better understand guiding through trauma so that I can lead a staff training for the other guides at Legacy.